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Think! 2014 August 1 - 7
August 6 POSSIBILITIES AND CREATIVITY one of the formal tools of lateral thinking is challenge use this to open up possibilities even when we are sure we have the right and only answer TRADITIONAL THINKING if there is one obvious and apparently satisfactory answer we stick with it and never explore possibilities possibilies used only as a way of getting to the truth once we believe we have already gotten to the truth we do not need possibilities CREATIVE POSSIBILITIES, MULTIPLE CHOICE research has shown however that creative students get marked down with multiple choice type of examination the less-create student chooses answer 'C' and cannot see the possibility of any other answer the creative student can see that under certain circumstances the answer could be 'D' in choosing 'D' or even in spending extra time deciding between possibilities, the creative student is going to do less well than the uncreative one you may be expected to choose a certain word but a creative person can see the possibility of a different word in a court of law the creative lawyer can show a possible alternative explanation for the evidence this creates "reasonable doubt" and in a criminal case the accused has to be acquitted possibility is at the heart of creativity The Tennis Tournament There is a singles tennis tournament. It is a knockout tournament. One player plays against another and the winner plays the winner of another match - and so on until there is a final winner. There is one final, two seminfals, four quarter finals and so on. On this occasion there are 72 entries. How many games will be required to find the winner? I sometimes use this problem in my seminars. It is not difficult to work out in the traditional way, but the audience usually get quite upset when I only give them 10 seconds to find the answer. With this problem, we normally seek to find the winner. With lateral thinking, there is another possibility. Forget about producing a winner; let us find the losers. With 72 entrants there will be 71 losers. Each loser is produced by one game. So 71 games are needed. That only takes five seconds ARGUMENT crude, primitive, very inefficient way of exploring ideas works best when seeking to destroy a position statement or assumption works well when trying to decide between two different positions does not work well at all when seeking to explore a subject negative in nature no generative qualities very good way of establishing the truth but useless for exploration (exploration means exploring and discovering new aspects of the subject) A WEAK IDEA THAT CANNOT BE ATTACKED WILL PREVAIL AGAINST A STRONGER BUT MORE VULNERABLE IDEA huge temptation to show off superiority by proving the other party wrong - even on trivial points too much ego play person who is skilled at argument may win against a less skilled person even if this other person has a better case August 5 POSIBILITIES AND SCIENCE there are tall pillar-like cacti in the Arizona desert De Bono asked why cacti had spikes on them this apparently was a silly question as everyone knew that cacti had spikes on them to prevent animals from eating them de bono observed that there are many non-desert parts in the world which had both plants and animals to eat them but why did those plants not have spikes de bono then suggested the possibility that the small spikes had nothing to do with animals the small spikes kept the boundary layer of air next to the plant stationary that way the plat lost less water through transpiration and evaporation as it turned out, the isreali government were doing research on exactly this point - how to grow plants with spikes so that they could survive in the desert? August 4 DESIGN AND CONFLICTS in a conflict, the leaders on both sides derive their significance and importance from the continuation of the conflict they have no real interest in solving the conflict because they will then lose any importance if these leaders can be given a permanent position of importance that does not depend on the conflict then the conflict will end KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION Which is the more important on its own: a detailed road map or the ability to drive a car? the development of the internet has allowed the organization of a communal brain where lots of people apply their thinking to an issue unfortunately a thousand poor thinkers does not itself give you good thinking what happened to China is happening today to major corporations the excellence of our computers allows corporations to feed all the necessary data into a computer the computer analyses the data, and this analysis forms the basis for all decisions and strategy this is very very dangerous because unless you make the effort to look at the data in different ways you stagnate in the old concepts